Black List

CHAPTER 40

Get behind the bed, lie down, and don’t move,” Nicholas said.

“Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?” Nina implored. “It’s the people who killed Caroline, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what’s going on. The power fluctuated a little while ago. This may be nothing.”

“Which is why you have me in here, along with the your dogs and a gun?”

“Shhhhh,” he said. “You need to be quiet, Nina. Please.”

The young woman did as he asked and the room fell silent. The dogs knew something was wrong and stood staring at the closed bedroom door, their ears alert, their noses sniffing the air for any foreign scent. Draco was the first to begin growling. Something had caught his attention.

As Argos joined him, two rounds pierced the bedroom’s upper window. Nina shrieked but quickly muffled her scream by clapping her hand to her mouth.

Nicholas shuffled over to her. “I’ve changed my mind. Stay as low to the floor as you can and get to the bathroom. Crawl into the tub and stay there. Don’t move until I come for you.”

Nina nodded as he raised his weapon and took aim at the bedroom door. The dogs were growling louder, and he could tell someone was in the house now.

“Stoy,” he whispered to them sternly in Russian. Stay! “Tzeeha.” Quiet!

Harvath knew that Nicholas was armed. He wouldn’t reenter the guesthouse without announcing himself. Somebody else had come in.

The little man glanced around quickly and came up with a plan. After positioning the dogs and ordering them to be quiet, he took his hiding place. The field of view was terrible, but at least he was concealed and would hopefully have the element of surprise on his side. If only he had his .45 as well.

Clutching the tiny M3, Nicholas felt his heart pounding in his chest and tried to slow it down. He took one deep breath after another. He was about to take in his fourth when a hail of bullets ripped through the door and the drywall beside it. There were sparks and the sounds of hisses and pops as the rounds chewed up the extensive computer setup. As soon as the shooting had begun, it stopped.

Nicholas knew he should breathe, but he couldn’t bring himself to, for fear of giving away his location. Instead, he gripped his weapon tighter while he prayed that none of the rounds had found Nina or the dogs.

The seconds ticked by, and he half wondered if maybe the attacker had moved on to the other rooms, but he knew better; especially when the knob turned and the door slowly swung open.

He braced himself for some sort of distraction device. He had heard that the effects of a flashbang, or stun grenade, could be mitigated by closing your eyes, jamming your fingers into your ears, and opening your mouth slightly to equalize the pressure, which is what he did.

He counted to three, and when nothing happened, he opened his eyes and looked. The first thing he saw was a suppressor, quickly followed by a fraction of a barrel and then a short handguard. Soon the entire weapon appeared, as well as the person holding it.

The attacker crept cautiously into the room, sweeping his rifle from side to side.

Two more steps, Nicholas said to himself. Two more steps.

The attacker took one, and was about to take another, when something suddenly made him stop.

Don’t stop. Just one more step.

But the man turned and started going in another direction. He was going toward the bathroom. Nicholas had to do something.

Cracking the lid of the empty equipment case he was hiding in, he raised his weapon. Come back this way, he silently pleaded, but the attacker had made up his mind.

In three more steps, Nicholas would lose sight of him. A shot from this angle wouldn’t be lethal, but it was all he had. Steadying himself, he lined up his weapon.

The .22 rounds came flying out of the little gun, hitting the attacker in his rump and the back of his left leg. He screamed in pain and spun to face his assailant. As he did, Nicholas yelled in Russian for the dogs.

As soon as the attacker turned and began trying to get a fix on who had shot him, the dogs burst from the bathroom door.

Argos leapt into the air and onto the man’s back as Draco attacked his wounded left leg. Together they brought him right to the floor and began tearing him apart.

In his fall, the man had lost his rifle, and Nicholas rushed from his hiding place just in time to see him draw a knife. Raising his weapon, he angled for a shot, but the dogs were all over him. He didn’t want to shoot one of his own animals.

As the man’s hand reached out and was just about to slice, Nicholas raced in front of the blade and used his weapon to parry the blow. There was the distinct clang of metal hitting metal, the force of which knocked Nicholas to the ground and made him fumble the little M3.

The man, still screaming while Argos and Draco mauled him, raised his knife again and prepared to bring it down. Nicholas found himself directly in its path. He tried to recover his weapon, at least to block the blade, if nothing else, but he knew he wasn’t going to be fast enough.

With no other choice, he grasped the hot barrel of his gun just as a muffled pop made the attacker’s knife fall to the floor, accompanied by a spray of blood and an even more powerful scream.

Scooting away from the man as he brought his weapon to bear, Nicholas looked up to see Nina, eyes wide with fear, grasping the attacker’s rifle.